Mobile development with AIR and Flex 4.5.1

Recently I have made a very pleasant experience developing a set of mobile applications for the BlackBerry Playbook using Adobe Flex 4.5.1.

In the past I have been critical of Adobe because I believed that Flex for Mobile was not sufficiently smooth on devices and the workflow not efficient, but after this project I had to think again. The main application is not very complex but has given to me the opportunity to evaluate in a real scenario the efficiency of the framework and the performance level on multiple devices.

The final impression is that Adobe is doing really well and after a year of tests and  improvements Flex is becoming an efficient and powerfull cross-device development framework. There are yet some points to improve and some features to implement/enhance but I’m not so critial anymore.

The application I developed is a classic multi media app developed by a media client (Virgin Radio Italy) to offer several multimedia contents for the entertainment of  their mobile users. The app offers:

– A selection of thematic web radio plus the live broadcast of the main radio channel (Virgin Radio Italy)
– A selection of podcasts (MP3) from the main programs of the radio
– The charts/playlist created by the Virgin’s sound designers or voted by the users
– A multi-touch photo gallery
– A selection of VOD contents like video clips, interviews, concerts

The application is now under approval and should be available in the Playbook’s AppWorld in a few days. In the while you can take a look at the UX with this preview video:

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